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Update/correction: I received the following note today from Peter Beinart explaining why his East Bay appearance was cancelled: “[The East Bay JCC] pulled out because a JVP person was moderator and then when there were no sponsors who were Zionist and anti-full BDS, I pulled out. I did that sadly–cause I agree with JVP on the awfulness of the occupation–but given my strong opposition to BDS targeting all of Israel, it didn’t make sense for me to speak to a forum in which there was not one anti-BDS organization sponsoring.”

Last week, when Peter Beinart embarked on a tour to promote his new book, “The Crisis of Zionism,” leading pro-Israel figures initiated an assault that was as hysterical as it was predictable. The campaign scored its first victory on March 23, when Bay Area pro-Israel groups including the Jewish Federation of the East Baysuccessfully pressured the East Bay Jewish Community Federation (the same group that helped block a Gaza children’s art exhibition last year) to withdraw its sponsorship of East Bay Jewish Community Center to cancel Beinart’s scheduled appearance. The pressure began when Jonathan Wornick, a Jewish Federation board member, took to Facebook to urge his friends in the local pro-Israel community to call for pulling out the cancellation of Beinart’s talk. “Write or call the East Bay JCC and tell them to REMOVE THEIR SPONSORSHIP of this event,” Wornick demanded.

After trashing Beinart and the sponsors of his talk, Wornick opened a Facebook thread mocking the family of Trayvon Martin, the black teenager killed by a neighborhood vigilante for no apparent reason other than being black. At the end of the thread, Wornick offered a list of hypothetical situations that would provoke him to shoot someone to death. He added: “and of course i’d shoot anyone anywhere if they were yelling allahu akbar! [sic]”

Below is Wornick’s call to ban Beinart:

After extended ranting about Beinart, Wornick linked to an article reporting the vigilante-killer George Zimmerman’s claim that his teen victim punched him. “So now that the facts have come out…are you proud of yourselves for jumping to conclusions?” Wornick railed.

Several screeds later, Wornick descended into murderous fantasies:

Wornick seems to have a penchant for extreme tirades. In March 2011, he published the following rant on his Facebook page:

“When will it end? Kill or be killed? Radical Islam, or, maybe all Islam is the problem. It’s a backward, misogynistic, hateful, anti-democratic, ant-semetic, and corrupt. We need to expose this to the western world and get people to realize that NOT ALL CULTURES ARE EQUAL. Islam, if allowed will spread and destroy all Western values. In order to stop films like this we need to stop the spread of Islam. Period.”

Though Wornick’s Islamophobic screed was publicly exposed, the East Bay Jewish Federation took no action against him. There is no reason to believe they will do anything this time, either. Thus important pillars of the Jewish establishment continue to confirm Beinart’s trenchant critique of them.

By the way, I have substantial criticisms of Beinart’s book which I will make known in the days ahead and in a review for the Journal of Palestine Studies. Mark Levine seems to share my opinions. Read his excellent review at Al Jazeera English.

On May 22, thousands of supporters of America’s most powerful pro-Israel lobbying group, the America-Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, converged on Washington for the group’s annual conference. For two days they watched Democratic and Republican congressional leaders pledge their undivided loyalty to the state of Israel, and by extension, to AIPAC’s legislative agenda. Speeches by President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu highlighted the conference, with Obama attempting to clarify his statement demanding that 1967 borders be the “starting point” for negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

I interviewed several AIPAC delegates in the streets outside the conference. While few, if any, of them were able to demonstrate the slightest degree of sophistication in their understanding of the Israel-Palestine crisis, they had been briefed inside on how to respond to critics. No one I spoke to would concede that Israel occupied any part of Palestinian territory; none would concede that Israel had committed acts of indiscriminate violence or that it had transferred Palestinians by force; one interviewee could not distinguish Palestine from Pakistan. With considerable wealth and negligible knowledge — few had spent much time inside Israel — the delegates were easily melded by the cadre of neoconservative and Israeli “experts” appearing in AIPAC’s briefing sessions.

As the day wore on, many delegates waded into confrontations with members of Code Pink and Palestine solidarity demonstrators who had set up a protest camp across the street. With conflict intensifying on the sidewalk, Code Pink’s Medea Benjamin invited AIPAC delegates to express themselves from the protest stage. There, their most visceral feelings and deeply held views about Israel-Palestine crisis were revealed. See it for yourself.

Juliano Mer Khamis with the cast of Alice in Wonderland, his final production at Jenin Freedom Theater

Update:Some have accused me on Twitter and elsewhere of being “irresponsible” for posting this. I assume they can’t read headlines, because I printed it as Aki Orr’s personal opinion — not mine. And if anyone is entitled to his opinion, it is Aki. He has seen and done more than all of them combined.

Adam at Mondoweiss reminded me about Udi Aloni’s excellent review of Juliano’s production of “Alice.” Read it here.

After the killing of Juliano Mer Khamis, I asked my friend Akiva Orr (watch my interview with him here) to write something about the actor. As an activist and writer since the early 1950’s, Akiva got to know Juliano and his mother, Arna. Akiva attended Juliano’s funeral yesterday in Kibbutz Ramot Menashe, then wrote me the following:

Sad news

Yesterday the Israeli-Arab actor-director Juliano Mer-Khamis was shot dead by a hooded assassin near his Freedom Theatre in Jenin.

Juliano Mer-Khamis’s funeral took place today in Kibbutz Ramot Menashe some 10 feet from his mother’s grave (which he designed).

I knew his mother very well.

Arna (1930-1995) was a genuine humanist who could not remain quiet when she saw someone being wronged

It outraged her and she reacted vehemently.

It was a guts response, not a rational response.

Jules took after her but had the added complication that his Dad was a christian Arab (once the leader of the CP in Nazareth) whereas Arna was a secular Jew whose father founded the medical corps in the IDF was a world authority on Malaria, hated Ben-Gurion, and expelled her after marrying an Arab.

Jules had a cultural ID complex which he exploited through art. He was an excellent actor. He acted out his life.

About 800 people attended the funeral, two third Arabs one third Jews.

I met many old friends there.

Nowadays we are too old to meet in demos so we meet in funerals.

An Arab youth choir sang and many people said a few words.

Udi Adiv (who did 12 years in prison for trying [unsuccessfully] to set up a Jewish-Arab Israeli armed struggle group against Israel in 1971) told me he was in constant contact with Jules.

Jules complained about the the arch conservative leadership of the Jenin refugee camp and planned to move to Jenin town, which is more enlightened.

The older generation leadership (50% of the camp inmates are under 20) was worried that the youth followed Juliano and his “Freedom Theater”.

He preached freedom not only from Israel, but also from Muslim tradition.

Many young girls, who rebel against the subservient role of women in the Palestinian society, were ardent actresses.

The oldies didn’t like the fact that girls appear on stage, have roles, and act together with boys.

The theatre is located inside the camp.

There were two attempts to burn it down.

The latest play Jules staged was “Alice in wonderland”

Most theatres in the West Bank refused to show it because the major role of a clever girl outraged all oldies in the West Bank.

No newspaper in the West Bank mentioned the Alice play.

It seems this was too much for the oldies.

So Jules paid with his life for staging “Alice in wonderland” in Palestine.

He died for the cause of “women’s liberation” … which goes much beyond “Palestine liberation.”

Juliano Mer Khamis was killed yesterday by a gunman in Jenin. I met him on a number of occasions. He exuded a unique charisma that was bound up with unpredictable rage and spontaneous joy. Gideon Levy has done justice to his legacy in a short but powerful obituary.

My friend Jen Marlowe helped create this video about Juliano’s work with the Jenin Freedom Theater. Watching it is all anyone needs to do to understand how much of a void his murder has created:

Juliano’s documentary, “Arna’s Children,” is the best film I have seen about the occupation. There is really no other film that approaches its emotional impact or captures the way in which the trasher of the occupation methodically destroys the lives of everyone in its path — and how those in its way resist it no matter what. So here it is, a testament to the genius of Juliano, the courage of his mother, who founded the Jenin Freedom Theater in 1988, and the humanity of the children of Jenin:

Juliano was born to a Jewish Israeli woman, Arna Mer, who dedicated the last years of her life to challenging the occupation, protesting at checkpoints and traveling to and from the Jenin refugee camp, even while in the terminal stages of breast cancer. His father was a Palestinian Christian bureaucrat, Saliba Khamis, who met Arna in the Israeli Communist Party, which was for decades the only party in Israel that promoted co-existence between Arabs and Jews. Mer and Khamis named their son after Salvatore Giuliano, a strikingly handsome, swaggering Italian bandit who led a small band of landless peasants against powerful oligarchs, earning himself a reputation as “the Italian Robin Hood” and eventual media stardom.

After making Arna’s Children and appearing in films like Amos Gitai’s “Kippur” (not the best Gitai film but still worth watching), Juliano set out to revive his mother’s Jenin Freedom Theater. The theater had been in ruins since the Israeli army destroyed it while reducing Jenin to a post-apocalyptic moonscape of destruction. Once the Second Intifada was crushed, the camp was transformed into a laboratory for Tony Blair and General Keith Dayton’s cynical security plan. Now Jenin was ringed by electrified fences, a virtual prison inhabited by thousands of children with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Juliano’s return to Jenin was a rebuke to the promise of former Israel Labor Minister Shlomo Benizri to “convert the life of Palestinians into hell,” as he restored a creative outlet for a generation the occupation had sought to demoralize and destroy. In turn, he brought young Israelis (including Palestinian Israelis) and international activists over the Green Line to help him build the theater, promoting a model of co-existence based on solidarity with the Palestinian grassroots.

With assistance from Zacharia Zubbeidi, a former leader of the armed insurgency during the Second Intifada, the theater allowed young people from the camp to take aim not only at the occupation, but at the internal problems plaguing Palestinian society. The next Intifada would consist of theater, music, poetry — the struggle of a dispossessed, dehumanized generation asserting itself through culture. That was Juliano’s vision.

Through their work in the theatre, young Jenin residents challenged traditions and entrenched social mores like corporal punishment and the relegation of young women to secondary social roles. “For me freedom is the occupation ending and the army leaving,” a young boy who participates in the theater said. “But it’s also playing snooker and not having anybody hit me.”

Juliano’s final play, a production of “Alice in Wonderland,” was filled with themes and symbols that explicitly challenged patriarchal authority. I wish I had traveled to Jenin with Matan Cohen when he invited me to see the play; the reviews I heard from those who attended it were glowing.

Was Juliano’s murder motivated by religious extremism? For now no one knows. The theater has been attacked with molotov cocktails and Juliano has been denounced as a Zionist agent by militant elements. He knew the risks of his work and was committed enough to risk paying the ultimate price.

“At the end, there’s a feeling that the spirit [of freedom] is already here, it’s already seeded,” he said during an interview in Jenin. “And I don’t believe that someone or anyone can stop it.”

The first of 21 pogroms against Al Arakib, courtesy of the Jewish National Fund (photo by Active Stills)

Today is the 35th anniversary of the Land Day massacre by Israeli soldiers of unarmed Palestinian citizens of Israel demonstrating against the expropriation of their farmland in the Galilee and the expansion of Jews-only settlements around their villages. According to Hatim Khanaaneh, a renowned doctor and activist whose memoir, “A Doctor In Galilee” is the best first hand account I have read of official Israeli discrimination against its Palestinian citizens, soldiers from the Golani Brigade celebrated the massacre in a nearby Jewish moshav by dancing and singing “Am Yisrael Chai.” The Land Day massacre electrified the Palestinian national movement inside Israel and popularized Toufiq Ziad’s poem, “Ounadikom” (I call out to you), an enduring cry of anti-colonial resistance that was recited this January in Cairo’s Tahrir Square by Waseem Wagdi.

On this year’s Land Day, the Jewish National Fund distributed a series of hysterical fundraising appeals and press releases that highlighted the organization’s sense of desperation. The letters are full of schnorring and devoid of content, as the JNF has no response to the factual arguments of its critics or to the reports of its recent abuses in the Negev. Instead, the organization has called for a “Stop the Hatred Day” and concocted a new slogan: “They destroy, we build.” Of course, anyone who is familiar with Al Arakib knows that it is the JNF that destroys and the indigenous Bedouins who rebuild.

Since it was founded in 1901, the JNF has been at the forefront of ethnic cleansing in Palestine. And now the group’s machinations are being exposed and countered through an effective, non-violent campaign based on a simple appeal to human dignity, international law and basic rights. It is no wonder its leadership is so defensive and desperate.

The excellent Israeli documentary “The Diaries of Yosef Nachmani” used the memoirs of one of the JNF’s top officials to expose the organization’s role in forcing Palestinian farmers off their own land, often through trickery and manipulation. JNF director Yosef Weitz was instrumental in hatching Plan Dalet, the campaign to ethnically cleanse at least 400 Palestinian villages and expel their residents in 1947 and 1948. After the war of 1948, Weitz orchestrated the planting of hundreds of thousands of non-native trees west of Jerusalem to cover up the scores of villages that had just been ethnically cleansed by Zionist militias. Today those trees look as natural to the landscape of the Judean Hills as the hair plugs on Joe Biden’s scalp.

The Land Day protests were sparked by the Israeli government’s “Judaization” of the Galilee, a plan that led to mass expropriations by the Israel Land Authority (ILA). Through a 1960 law, ILA was required to allocate half of the seats in its council to the JNF. A law the following year clearly stated the JNF existed “for the purpose of settling Jews on such lands and properties.” In other words, the JNF openly discriminated on the basis of ethnicity. Having acquired 70 percent of its land through confiscations from Palestinian refugees and present absentees through the Absentee Property Law of 1950, the JNF became a key mechanism for expropriation and ethnic cleansing under the guise of developing Israel for its Jewish citizens.

The 1995 Supreme Court Ka’adan ruling forbade the ILA from leasing land exclusively through the JNF. The court made its ruling on the grounds that the JNF openly discriminates against non-Jews. However, a Knesset vote in 2007 undermined the ruling, prompting the Israeli newspaper Haaretz to editorialize: “The Jewish National Fund’s land policy counters the interests of the state and cannot discriminate by law against the minority living in Israel.” (The title of the editorial was, “A Racist and Jewish State.”)

Today, though the ILA is able to sell some of its land to private developers, the JNF still controls 6 of 13 seats on the ILA’s council while maintaining numerous arrangements for land swaps with the state. With the ILA in possession of 93 percent of Israel’s land, the JNF remains in a prime position to dictate how the Galilee and Negev are “Judaized.” But as Alaa Mahajneh of the Palestinian-Israeli legal rights center Adalah points out, the increasingly complex arrangements make legislating equality from within the Israeli legal system even more difficult.

In recent years, the JNF has focused its efforts on an area in the Negev known as Al Arakib. It is the ancestral home of the Al Touri Bedouin tribe. In 1951, the Bedouins were removed from their land by the Israeli army, which told them they could return once it completed a series of training exercises. Years passed until the tribe came back, but by then they were considered “present absentees” thanks to the aforementioned Absentee Property Law. This meant that they were internal refugees with no rights to their own land, even if they had property deeds. Their land had been transfered into the hands of the Development Authority, the custodian for confiscated land at the time, and then handed over to the ILA, which eventually authorized the JNF to do what it does best: ethnic cleansing.

Nuri El Okbi, a veteran Bedouin rights activist from Al Arakib, attempted to move back to his family’s property, where the ruins of his father’s house lay. Not only did El Okbi have land deeds his parents had saved in a halvah box to prove their right to the land, he had aerial photos dating from 1947 that clearly showed his family’s home and fields. Each time he encamped there, however, Israeli police officers removed him by force. After the 40th attempt to return, El-Okbi received a restraining order forbidding him from setting foot on the land he spent his childhood. He can not return because he is not a Jew. In other countries during other times, this was considered apartheid.

Since the JNF has set its sights on Al Arakib, the village has been destroyed 21 times. Israeli police have used rubber bullets, percussion grenades, teargas, batons and bulldozers against women, children, and the elderly — all unarmed — in their effort to remove the Bedouin un-people from the area so the JNF can go to work. During the first destruction of Al Arakib, a squad of Israeli high school age students were hired to remove belongings from the homes of Al Arakib residents — the “Summer Camp of Destruction.” The students vandalized homes in the process and reportedly belted out the familiar “Am Yisrael Chai!” when the bulldozers moved in. ILA bulldozers accompanied by riot police have attempted to destroy and desecrate the Al Arakib cemetary, which contains graves more than a century old. And recently, the Israel State’s Attorney Office has announced plans to sue the residents of Al Arakib for $1 million shekels for the demolition of their own homes.

To complete its project in and around Al Arakib, the JNF has accepted millions of dollars in funding from a racist and anti-Semitic evangelical broadcasting network, GOD TV, that openly propagates End Times theology demanding that all Jews to convert to Christianity or suffer in an “everlasting lake of fire.” With the JNF’s help, GOD TV’s huckstering CEO Rory Alec will be able to fulfill his mission of “redeeming the land for Christ” by building “GOD TV Forest” on the ruins of Al Arakib. Meanwhile, Alec has lavished money on Givot Bar, a Jewish town in the area that is likely to benefit from the newly approved Communities Acceptance Law allowing small communities to openly discriminate against applicants on the basis of ethnicity and sexual orientation (and it is unlikely that blue collar Mizrahi Jews will be able to afford the 5000 Shekel application fee Givot Bar requires).

Recently, the Australian television news show Dateline produced an excellent report on Al Arakib. Dateline told the story of El Okbi, comparing him to the Australian aboriginal rights advocate Eddie Mabo, who won a landmark court case eliminating the white colonists’ legal fiction of Terra Nullius, a concept that still forms the basis of Israeli land confiscations.

Dateline then interviewed Shlomo Szizar, an official from the JNF’s bureaucratic parent, the ILA. In three lines, Siza summarized the logic of the JNF and the Zionist movement that brought it into being: “Every year, [the Bedouins] invade and we remove them. They invade and we remove them. We’re not going to let this land be invaded.”

Having turned the indigenous people of Palestine into “invaders” in their own land, the JNF’s leadership insists that their intentions are good. “I can tell you one simple thing,” JNF CEO Russell Robinson wrote in a March 28 email newsletter. “No other organization is doing anywhere near as much as JNF is to help enhance the quality of life for this [Bedouin] population.”